#silly snips

There's a heartbeat of faint needled intent just before Jon rolls them. Thin-limbed, willowy, somehow he hides a maddening strength. "You’re just a junkie chasing his next high,” he hisses, eyes bright in the gloom. The palm of one hand finds the underside of Danny's jaw, fingers digging in. “I only indulge your predilections on a whim.” “Ugh, tell me how you really feel,” Danny rasps. The pain is surely there, somewhere, but. It's so far away, he truly can't feel it. “I'm, I'm not scared of you.” Or anything. Not anymore. Not like this.

wrong?

Danny hums and slowly unfurls at his name, twisting over with a much too wide yawn. “Hm?” “Do you know where the kid is?” Jace demands, hands fisted at his sides. “Kid?” he echoes, gaze drifting languidly between them. Propping his head up on folded arms, Danny scratches lightly at the thick shelf of green lined conk beneath him. “Mm. Yeah, why?” Bruce cuts in before Jace can. “Is he in the manor?” Wrinkling his nose, Danny frowns. “He?” “Who else would we be askin’ about?” Jace swings out an arm to about his waist. “Lance, yay high, blonde haired lil’ white boy? Can’t miss him.” “Can’t, huh,” Danny muses to Jace’s bald irritation. “Dunno. I thought we were talking about her.” A long pause follows that, both Jace and Bruce trading startled looks. Her. Her. Besides them, no one should be in the manor except Dana, Terry, Tim, and Lance. “Who?” Bruce dares to ask of Danny's sudden rakish grin. “Poor Jenny Wren,” he croons, and Bruce. He — “Why didn't you keep her, B?”

Two tiny spots of pressure trod hard on his side, and Danny squirms, frowning, and doesn’t even consider opening his eyes until the dull aches multiply, and an absolutely foul little breath follows needle sharp teeth on his nose. “What?” he groans, swiping an arm, and hits fluffy fur. Danny slits his eyes open to a strike of lightning — red flashes under the immediate roar of thunder. For a moment, his heart stutters, but — “T-Teekl?” The cat stares back at him, unblinking, and lashes her tail. Hesitantly, he reaches for her; she allows the pets for a moment, unfazed, before standing up on his chest. Ow. But… if she’s here, her master can’t be too far behind. Disgruntled, Danny sits up and Teekl’s displaced to balance precariously on the very edge of his bed. Outside, rain pelts his window. Danny blearily surveys his room, squinting into the gloom, but finds nothing quite out of place. At least not until the cat jumps down and highlights the mess of his floor. “What the hell?” Danny mumbles, brow furrowing. Those are… all his old shoes, old bookbags and mess, that’s lived under his bed for God knows how long. “Teekl, where’s — ” Light cuts through the darkness. The following boom shakes everything — the cat fluffs out, ears twitching, and then wriggles herself under his bed. Just on the edge of hearing there’s a whimper, something thumps against the wall and the bottom of his bed, the movement broadcast up to him. Huh.

“No,” you say, because this must have been Ra’s al ghul, and the ghost goes incandescent. A spectral sword appears in his free hand to roiling fury, and the hooked, curved blade swings for your neck. But now the playing field’s changed; that might have worked mere moments before, but it won’t now — bright green shards shower the ground. Confusion tarnishes the new certainty, fresh belief smudging across your hand as he pulls back the broken if reforming steel. You breathe through it on false breath, a wave of poised uncertainty. “Mother, wait —” Talia stalks forward, Damian left behind Cujo’s interfering bulk. The distance closes quickly, and her spear of intent startles you — lets the ghost pull free with a shout of No! and another green blade. “Have you regrown your heart, father?” she demands through the clash of their steel. The swords are thrown wide as she’s pressed back, the ghost planted firmly over the man on the ground. “Now? Suddenly?”

“Just trust me!” Danny yelps, and then gets slammed backwards for the effort. Which also gets a barked laugh out of Nightingale. “Why the hell should I trust you?” he demands, chest heaving — the froth of the held ectoblast throws writhing and stark shadows across wide distraught eyes. “Name one good reason why I should?” “Don't you trust yourself?” he tries, hands scrabbling uselessly across the man's fist wrapped up in the material of his jumpsuit. So strong. Too strong. “We, we aren't exactly the same, but c'mon, it's me, and we're enough of each other that should count for —” The look that crosses Nightingale’s face is enough to make Danny cut himself off. It's a terrible mix of incredulous disbelief yet something miserable and crushing. “We are not the same,” the man says. “You still don't get it and that's, I want to say it's okay because you just don’t understand, but Ancients, Fenton, are you that naive?” “I'd like to think I'm just optimistic!”

"Back up," Nightingale says, voice low and hard. Bruce doesn't move. In the dim light of the alley, the other man’s irises almost seem to glow, chips of blistering ice — not a hint of green to be seen. "Daniel Nightingale," Bruce growls, and the squared line of Nightingale’s shoulders tightens further. Then, in League dialect, he continues, “What business do you have here?” Nightingale’s eyes flicker, a muscle jumping in his jaw. Did he understand that? Why would Ra’s send someone to Gotham? Is… The Pits don’t work on the deceased — what does Nightingale know? "Back up," Nightingale repeats, the threat of violence skyrocketing while the temperature of the air around them immediately plummets. "Back the fuck up." What little skin that is bare to the world burns with cold, and Bruce exhales a visible breath. A mean and curling snarl edges in on Nightingale's face, the animosity clear.

This Jason Todd is… odd. To put it plainly. Tim's never had much of an opinion of him up until recently — one that started with proper respect that then became painful dislike. Hate, maybe. Involuntary apprehension. He hasn’t had the time to properly examine it, not with the resurgence of his nightmares and… just this all, but. This Jason Todd is clearly not the Jason Todd they know. He fidgets under Tim's scrutiny, frowning, but remains otherwise obedient and polite within the confines of the cell — it feels purposeful to offset the unnatural stillness; Tim isn’t even sure he's breathing. The staring annoys him, must be frustrating, but the only thing Jason says is Take a picture, it'll last longer and then silently prompts a staring contest that Tim loses.